Animal Post #1: Local penguins

It turns out that there's a colony of Little Penguins near us. Apparently, after the St. Kilda pier was built, the penguins moved in. It takes about 20 minutes to walk from our apartment to their colony.

They come home a little after sunset. Part of the area where they live is fenced off, but some of them live on the near side of the fence. We watched the sunset by the fence as we waited for them. Really beautiful:



After it had gotten pretty dark, the penguins started appearing. They're a little hard to see because (1) they're little (a bit smaller than a big chicken), (2) it's dark and (3) for the penguins' sake, no flash photography is allowed.

So most of our photos didn't come out. But one did (it's probably better to look at the larger photo):

The penguins were extremely cute - they didn't seem intimidated by humans, though they kept a little distance. They made noise too - Naomi thought it was like chirping, and Colin thought it was like a purring snore (so imagine something in the middle).

The next day, we were given a guided tour of the Melbourne Zoo...